rif

A terminal session daemon. Like tmux, screen, or abduco — but simpler.

rif keeps your shell alive when you disconnect. A background daemon owns a PTY and a shell; clients connect over Unix domain sockets. Detach with Ctrl+\, reattach later, and terminal state is restored.

Panes and tabs are left to your terminal emulator (WezTerm, Kitty, etc.). rif does one thing: persistent sessions.

Install

Requires Rust (edition 2024) and just.

just              # release build + install to ~/.local/bin + codesign (macOS)
just build        # debug build
just release      # release build only
cargo build       # direct cargo

Usage

rif <session>                Attach to (or create) a session
rif attach <session>         Same as above
rif attach -d <session>      Create session without attaching
rif new <session>            Same as attach -d
rif list [-s]                List sessions (-s for short/scriptable format)
rif run <session> <cmd...>   Run a command in a session (-d for detached, --fish)
rif send <session> <text>    Send keystrokes to a session
rif print <session> <text>   Inject text into session display
rif write <session> <path>   Write stdin to a file via the session
rif tail <name>...           Follow session output in real-time
rif history <session>        Print session output (--vt, --html)
rif detach [<session>]       Detach all clients (uses $RIF_SESSION if no arg)
rif kill <name>... [-f]      Kill sessions (-f for SIGKILL)
rif wait <name>...           Wait for sessions to complete
rif completions <shell>      Print completions (bash, zsh, fish)

All subcommands have short aliases: a, n, r, s, p, wr, t, hi, d, k, w, l/ls, c, v, h.

Detach key: Ctrl+\

Examples

# Start a session named "dev"
rif dev

# Detach with Ctrl+\, then reattach later
rif dev

# Run a command in the background, wait for it
rif run -d build make -j8
rif wait build

# Send keystrokes to a running session
rif send dev "ls -la" $'\n'

# Tail output from multiple sessions
rif tail 'dev*'

# List active sessions
rif list

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
RIF_SESSION	Set inside sessions to the current session name
RIF_SESSION_PREFIX	Prefix applied to session names (for grouping)
RIF_SHELL	Override the shell to spawn (default: $SHELL, fallback: /bin/sh)
RIF_DIR	Override the socket directory (default: $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/rif or $TMPDIR/rif-<uid>)
RIF_DIR_MODE	Permission mode for socket directory
RIF_LOG_MODE	Permission mode for log files

Architecture

┌──────────┐     Unix socket     ┌──────────┐     PTY      ┌───────┐
│  Client   │◄──────────────────►│  Daemon   │◄────────────►│ Shell │
│ (rif)     │                    │ (forked)  │              │       │
└──────────┘                     └──────────┘              └───────┘

The daemon forks on first attach, creates a PTY, and spawns a shell. It runs a single poll() loop over: signal pipe, server socket, PTY master, and all client fds. Terminal state is tracked via a vt100 parser and replayed on reattach.

Sessions are identified by name and communicate over a binary protocol (5-byte header: 1 tag + 4 LE length + payload).

Using with Terminal Emulators

rif intentionally has no built-in pane/tab system. Use your terminal emulator instead:

WezTerm:

wezterm cli split-pane -- rif attach dev.2

Kitty:

kitty @ launch --type=window --cwd=current rif attach dev.2

License

MIT